b2mem | A Sage Decision by octopus

B2MeM Prompt, Card and Number: B7 – Sage (Card 25 - Botany), Fox (Card 30 - Color Burst 1 - Red), mazes and labyrinths (Card 103 - Horror)
Format: short story
Genre: Gen
Rating: General
Warnings: none
Characters: Aragorn, Gollum
Pairings: none
Creator’s Notes (optional): none
Summary: Aragorn could imagine more pleasant places to travel through than the Emyn Muil and more pleasant companions than Gollum. But sometimes good luck can be found even in unlikely places.

Also on AO3.

Aragorn looked up at the bleary hills before him. He had been hoping that his path would not lead this way, but it was the best way to avoid the spies of Sauron.

All the maps he had ever seen of the Emyn Muil were vague at best, often contradictory and occasionally ominous.

For once, his prisoner seemed to agree with him in his disdain for the hills.

“Ech, not the nasty cutting hills!” Gollum protested. “Nasty Longlegs must not lead us that way, my precious!”

“We are going that way,” Aragorn said firmly. “I do not like it either, but you don’t want to fall into the hands of Sauron’s servants again, do you?”

Gollum’s hand’s twitched showing the scars of the torture he had been submitted which were only just starting to heal. He said nothing more but reluctantly let himself be led towards the sharp crags of the hills.

Just before they reached the first sharp cliff, Aragorn sniffed the air and paused.

“What is it, my precious?” Gollum asked. “What does it smell?”

“This,” Aragorn replied, stooping down and picked a twig with fuzzy white leaves of a shrub. “It is sage.”

Gollum made a disgusted sound. “It stinks, it does.”

Aragorn paid him no heed and put the twig in a pocket. An old belief amongst the Dunadain said that sage could ward off evil. He could practically see Elrond raising an eyebrow at him and pointing out that the only evil it would ward off would be a sore throat, but Aragorn could see no harm in taking it along. You never knew.

The passage through the hills was at least as unpleasant as Aragorn had imagined. The rocks were at least as sharp as a broken bottle in a bar and it didn’t take long before not only Gollum’s hands but also Aragorn’s were covered in cuts. Gollum also complained about the cuts on his feet, but he refused both the medical treatment Aragorn offered him and pieces of cloth to wrap around them.

Perhaps even worse than the cuts was the lack of progress they made. Sometimes they travelled for a day, only to find themselves at a dead end between unsurpassable cliffs and no other possibility but to turn back the way they had come from.

After a week, they found themselves looking back out at the place where they had started.

“It is lost, precious! Lost, and nasty Longlegs won’t let us leave to find our own way. If it doesn’t let us go, we will be lost in the cutting hills until we die.”

“Nobody is going to die here,” Aragorn said as patiently as he could after having listened to Gollum’s complaints for days on end. “If we take a different way, Sauron’s spies will find us. Then there will be pain and death, and you wouldn’t want that, would you? We will try again, and this time, we will find the way.”

Gollum made a sound of displeasure but said nothing more.

Two weeks after they had entered the Emyn Muil, Aragorn started doubting the wisdom of his decision as well. They still seemed to be going around in circles and though Aragorn thought they were probably close to the edge of the hills, but they could just as well be miles away. For every mile a crow could fly, they needed to walk many, up cliffs, down ravines and around countless corners. Their food would not last forever and Aragorn had really had more pleasant traveling companions before. If they ended up at the point again where they had started, Aragorn just might take the risk and go around the hills after all.

Aragorn finished his waybread listlessly and settled down for the night, though not before checking that Gollum’s fetters were secure.

Aragorn woke at down to a strange snuffling sound. His hand creeping towards his sword, he opened his eyes just far enough to get a glimpse of what was going on. A fox was snuffling at his pack, inspecting the pocket in which Aragorn had put the twig of sage.

The fox froze as it noticed that Aragorn was looking at it.

“Squeeze its neckses!” Gollum hissed. “Let’s have juicy foxes meat for breakfast!”

“We are not going to squeeze anyone’s neck,” Aragorn said quietly. “We still have enough bread and dried meat.”

“Blergh! We could have juicy meatses but no, Longlegs is too noble to eat foxes.”

The fox looked at Gollum reproachfully and then trotted over to a couple of thorny bushes without much haste. Aragorn got up, took out some bread and meat and they ate their breakfast, Gollum still complaining about missed opportunities.

When they got up to start their day’s march, the fox stretched, yawned and started trotting ahead of them. Aragorn expected him to hurry off into the bushes soon, but it kept walking ahead of them. Occasionally, it watched them as they struggled with a particularly difficult terrain, only to walk on again when they had caught up. After an hour or so, Aragorn had the distinct feeling that it was leading them. So when it turned away from where Aragorn usually would have walked, he decided to follow it.

“We can still squeeze its neckses,” Gollum suggested hopefully.

“No.”

“Then why are we following it?”

“Because I think it is leading us.”

Gollum huffed “Foxes don’t lead Longlegs anywhere.”

The fox led them down a steep ravine, waiting for them at the bottom. When they had also climbed and slid to the bottom, it led them along a narrow path between thorny bushes. Finally, it trotted underneath a large bush beside a cliff and some boulders.

“Ssss-sss, we told it that foxes is not leading us, my precious. Longlegs is foolish. We should have squeezed its neckses.”

Aragorn examined the bush. There was just enough space to squeeze underneath and it luckily wasn’t one of the thornier bushes.

“We follow it,” he decided. “You go first.”

Gollum, complained and grumbled but had no other choice but to do as he was told. It was a tight fit, especially for Aragorn, but there was a small space behind the bush in which the fox had settled down for a quick rest. When it saw them, it opened its yellow eyes and got up again, but this time, Aragorn would have known the way himself. For now that they were closer to the wall of the cliff, he could see that there was a crack leading through the cliff, just wide enough for one person to walk through.

When they reached the other side, they could see the Anduin flowing below and what might have once been a path leading down towards it. It was winding, steep and sown with boulders and thorny bushes, but it would not be an unsurmountable task.

The fox was sitting beside the crack with a stance that told Aragorn it would not go any further.

“Thank you, my friend,” Aragorn said and took out a number of pieces of dried meat.

He held them out towards the fox, which carefully took them from his hand and disappeared back through the crack.

“What is Longlegs doing?! Our meatses!”

“You weren’t too keen on it this morning, were you? Now let’s keep moving, then we might have fish for dinner, which I’m sure you won’t complain about.”